I do recommend this book. It’s both instructive and comprehensive in demonstrating how to use hash objects to solve real problems using SAS. If you’re wondering why you would want to use the SAS hash object, this book provides the best answer I’ve seen.

Of course, these well-known (in SAS circles) authors made sure the book clearly shows how the hash object interacts with the data step program data vector (readers should be familiar with the SAS data step – but that’s all). It covers all the hash methods and hash attributes developed by SAS (including a couple that justifiably leave the authors unenthusiastic). And it shows techniques for a diverse collection of common data management and analysis tasks: managing stacks, queues, grouping, dynamic partitioning, sorting, deduplication, percentiles, and others. This is far more than just the table lookup process that constitutes the bulk of most writing on the subject. And there’s a 63-page chapter covering a topic almost never covered in depth: namely effective management of the primary resource consumed by hash objects: memory.